Page 117 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
“This place hates me.” She huffed.
“It protects its secrets.” Emrys smirked and clasped her hand. “But you’re with me, and I know all of its secrets.”
“Of course you do.” Quinn sighed and allowed him to navigate her through the maze. “Where are Giselle and Jevon?”
“Searching the rooms.”
“Oh, good.”
Emrys grimaced. “I know I promised I wouldn’t do this again, but—”
He gently pushed her into the wall and planted a falsely passionate kiss on her lips. A kiss for an audience.
A show . . . until it wasn’t.
It started as locked lips and guarded disguises. Emrys did his best to not actually kiss her—not like before. It wasn’t a kiss forhim or for her. It was an escape route. A way to distract the person coming down the hallway.
For the scandal that it was, it was the tamest, most respectful of stage kisses.
And it wasn’t Emrys who turned it into more. It was Quinn who opened her lips with a sigh and deepened it into passion. It was Quinn who laced her fingers into his hair and pulled him closer. But she wasn’t alone. He matched her fire with an inferno of his own, and soon he was teaching her so, so much more about kissing.
He was teaching her about lust and pleasure and devastation. For what they were doing would only lead to devastation. But Quinnevere Ashelle didn’t care anymore. She was done fighting her physical attraction to him. Now, she just wanted all of him.
Someone cleared their throat and said, “Get a room, Princeling.”
Breathless, his lips left hers, her heart beating a symphony of excitement.
Emrys glanced behind him, still shrouding her with his tall, muscled body. “With pleasure.”
“And see that she makes her way back to the show.” The sharp soprano voice belonged to the owner of the Viridian.
“Of course.” A smug smile graced his swollen, just-kissed lips. He pulled her by the hand down the hall and into a room, his breath heavy as they waited for Kordelia to leave the hall.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly as I’d planned it,” Emrys said.
Embarrassment cried a river from Quinn’s head to her toes. “We are not gonna talk about it.”
“We’re not going to talk about how you just attacked me?” Amusement colored his voice.
Quinn scoffed. “Who attacked who is debatable. Now, seal your lips, Prince.”
“Are you sure you prefer them sealed?”
“Do you think it’d hurt if I punched a vampire?” she asked.
Emrys chuckled. “It would hurt, but not the person you intended it to.”
“Silence, Prince.”
Emrys mimed, sealing his lips before grasping her hand and leading her out of the room and farther into the Courtesan Wing.
With each step she took closer to Constance’s room, more anxiety stroked her core. Quinn was about to discover if one of her best friends murdered her family. Maybe she allowed herself to get lost in the halls because she wasn’t ready to handle the truth.
The pressure was dense.
Her brain wouldn’t quiet. It kept circling through all the information over and over again.
Betrayal split her skull, filling her cell nuclei with chaos. A myriad of feelings circled in her baffled mind. Emotions she worked so hard to avoid and keep at a distance flooded through her bones. And she needed it to stop. She needed an experiment, a body or something to study, or to dance. Anything that would take her mind off Constance DeWinter.
